Bouncing to disk for a client. L1 or no L1?

[Mark Alan Miller]

Dave, I cannot agree more.

[mcaff]

SOme people are saying buss compressor and some a are saying limiter. While a device may do either, I think the idea of mixing with "limiting" is crazy. You're either going to quickly get mislead and have way too much early on and get accusomted to to it, turn down the conlsoe output to a low volume becuase it's fatiguing and you want to avoid Fletcher/Munson issues and hten when you're donw you mix as no low end and souds likes it's one volume no matter how loud you turn it up.

Or, you'll compensate by pulling all the faders down so that you don't hear the limiting and your mix sounds good and it will be as if you didn't have the limiter on in the first place. Except now, your gainstaging is all wrong.

If you're useing the term limiter and meaning to use it for compression as opposed to peak limiting, that's a who different story, and it definitely makes sense to mix with a buss compressor.

If you point is that the limit that will eventuall be applied in mastering can change your mix, that's true. So mix with out it and pop it on to check it. Or print one without and your final mix and then one with an L1 or L2 to get some foreshadowing for mastering. That's what I do, although since I'm not mixing in the box, I'd have to do a recall to make changes. If you're mxing in the box, this would be very easy.

Mixing with peak limiting mecanse a couple of things. First that you're getting sucked into the volume wars at the mix stage and then seccond, you're not sending the tracks to be mastered later becuase what is a mstering negineer going to do with a L1 or L2 limted mix? Limiit it more? Or compress it and then limit it?

One comprimis would be to mix with the limiter on and pring a version for mastering without it, but that's an even bigger risk, because that mix will sound different and then the if the mastering engineer doesn't limit the identical way you're mix will really be altered. Or if the compress and EQ first before they limit, or if they get their volume without limiting, your mix will really be different.

In theory the idea does seem to address a real probelm, but practially it's best to leave the limiting to mastering.

[curtiswyant]

I think it depends if you're mastering-while-mixing or if you want to devote a seperate session to mastering one or multiple songs (for a CD). I would think that you would want to leave the limiting until the mastering stage unless you are only recording one song because what are you going to do if your "mastered" song #1 is quieter than song #2 on your CD? You're going to end up having to mess around with it even more. I would say get a good mix without using a buss limiter, then, in the mastering stage, use limiting to make your songs loud or whatever.

[soundguy]

I use the word limiter and compressor fairly interchangably in my world. For clarity my comments in this thread would be in regards to low ratio compression, like 1:2 low ratio compression on a mix buss...

doing one mix without a limiter and then throwing one is is missing my entire point. how the f does this work? Its my experience that in order for buss limiting or compression whatever you want to call it, ie, NOT peak limiting, to help you, a mix needs to be built around the presence of the buss compressor. I do not understand how you can tier a mix without a buss compressor and then just stick one on and expect it your mix, right down to EQ, to make any sense. Perhaps it is this practice which leads some folks to talk about compressing a mix in a bad light. The other big issue I dont get is how guys mix without any compression and they send a mix to mastering for compression and peak limiting and then expect to not get a completely different sounding mix back in return.

Mixing with peak limiting mecanse a couple of things. First that you're getting sucked into the volume wars at the mix stage and then seccond, you're not sending the tracks to be mastered later becuase what is a mstering negineer going to do with a L1 or L2 limted mix? Limiit it more? Or compress it and then limit it?

I would ask this question of the top mastering engineers out there and what they do. Sure seems silly, doesnt it. From what I have heard, the first audio slave record was sent to mastering as a block, no discernable waveform in the audio files. Amazing.

dave